National Jewelry Retailer Reaches Shoppers Throughout Buyer Journey with Geo-Fencing and Native from Simpli.fi
Overview
Developing a Full-Funnel Marketing Strategy
With an estimated 81% of shoppers performing online research before making a purchase (AdWeek), mobile and online advertising have become one of the most effective ways to reach retail customers. Recently, a large jewelry retailer representing multiple brands wanted to maximize their relevance with jewelry shoppers by expanding their reach and increasing foot traffic into local storefronts with a granular programmatic advertising campaign.
While the advertiser has been leveraging Simpli.fi’s location-based advertising solutions to conquest competitor stores for almost four years, they wanted to expand their media mix on behalf of two brands. Simpli.fi and the advertiser developed a comprehensive programmatic strategy to target relevant jewelry shoppers from the awareness stage to the purchase stage using a mix of Simpli.fi’s solutions. Overall, the brand wanted to maximize in-store foot traffic and drive a low Cost Per Store Visit (CPSV) of $50 with a 10-week campaign.
Reaching Active Shoppers with Competitor Conquesting
First, the advertiser implemented Geo-Fencing to target users in the consideration stage of the buyer journey who were actively shopping at nearby competitor locations. The jewelry retailer utilized Simpli.fi’s Geo-Fence Finder Tool to identify 17,202 relevant locations across the nation for Brand A and 5,803 for Brand B. The Simpli.fi team then built target fences around the exact shape and size of each location to capture users who visited the competitor storefronts and serve them display ads for up to 30 days.
In order to track physical visits, the team drew Conversion Zones around 1,021 of Brand A’s brick-and-mortar locations and 237 of Brand B’s. Therefore, when a user visited one of the advertiser’s stores after being served an ad, they counted as an offline conversion.
Driving Online and In-Store Traffic with Native
After Simpli.fi’s recent expansion of native advertising solutions, the jewelry retailer decided to incorporate native contextual into their advertising mix due to its proven success in the retail vertical. Native advertising helped visually showcase the retailer’s products while delivering ads alongside relevant content without disrupting the user experience.
In order to ensure that the advertiser reached users throughout the entire buyer journey, the campaign used native display ads across three device types including mobile, tablet, and desktop. The team then optimized the campaign to serve more impressions to devices with the highest engagement, leading to more than 92% of the ads being served on mobile devices and driving an above average CTR for both brands. In support of this strategy, a recent study indicated users served a native ad on their mobile device dwelled on the advertisement anywhere from two to five times longer than traditional display ads (eMarketer).
In order to further engage shoppers during the awareness and consideration stages, the advertiser leveraged Simpli.fi’s audience data partnerships to reach users in specific life stages, such as preparing to propose or experiencing an upcoming anniversary.
However, Simpli.fi and the advertiser designed the campaign to guide users through the funnel and to ultimately drive conversions. In order to reach shoppers during the decision stage, they targeted users who were geographically close to the retail storefronts and also actively engaging with content related to jewelry, family and relationships, and fashion. The campaign targeted the 5,927 ZIP codes surrounding stores for Brand A and 5,543 ZIP codes for Brand B. The Simpli.fi team then leveraged their partnership with Cuebiq to track and verify in-store visits attributable to the native ads.
Simpli.fi Increases In-Store Foot Traffic
Within two months, the campaign generated 5,799 total display actions for Brand A and 2,170 for Brand B, leading to a low display CPSV of $2.66 and $4.99 respectively, beating the advertisers benchmark goal of a $50 CPSV. The advertiser also garnered 39,344 total native actions for Brand A and 2,343 for Brand B, leading to a low native CPSV of $1.02 and $16.97 respectively. All of the in-store native conversions were tracked and verified by Cuebiq.
Furthermore, the native advertisements more than tripled the industry standard by producing a .33% CTR for Brand A and a .32% CTR for Brand B. The advertiser plans to continue working with Simpli.fi to reach qualified shoppers, drive down the cost of in-store conversions, and influence users throughout the buyer journey.
